If Labour splits into two parties, will it never be elected again?

That made me laugh, given that Clem was a product of one of the most expensive public schools in England! Not your typical Leftist idol.

Thinking of schools, I went to school with Corbyn's son. There was some consternation when Corbyn didn't send his son to the local comprehensive, but to a grammar school several miles away.

Yes, it is.

On welfare, they have few beliefs beyond tinkering around the edges (a slight rise to Carers' Allowance, that the Tories came out with first, for example) or returning the welfare state to the position it was before the reforms in the later years of Labour and the advent of the Coalition. Essentially a John Major timewarp.

On tax, while the Greens, Lib Dems and Labour were all advocating tax increases in Scotland to avoid cuts in public spending, the SNP could only bring itself to call for a slightly reduced tax cut for higher earners.

They supported a minimum wage increase below what George bloody Osborne introduced.

They supported an increase for NHS spending in line with the Barnett consequentials they'd receive from the proposed increases in England. This is after cutting the NHS in real terms, while the Coalition were increasing spending on it in England.

The SNP U-turned on any suggestion of a "mansion tax", instead introducing a tiny increase for council tax on the highest value properties - an increase the Tories backed them on! They U-turned again on a 50p tax when the powers to implement it were introduced to the Scottish Parliament: they've dropped the policy.

Tell me again what makes them radical left-wingers. Wanting Trident out of Scotland like a bunch of pearl-clutching, 70s-throwback Hyacinth Bucket-style NIMBYs? Great, just great.

Did you actually read the attached article? I think you may have been looking at the wrong manifesto,

Yes, as I made clear they U-turned on their faintly left-wing policies that they pinched off of Scottish Labour. Their 2015 manifesto may have been slightly more to the left, but it was far from radical. What few stances were not overly centrist, and most were, were jettisoned within a year.

At any rate, the 2015 manifesto was for a parliament that they could never realistically have power in. The 2016 manifesto was written for what they actually wanted to do in government.

I have no idea what Haileybury's fees were when Attlee attended, but except for holders of scholarships, when Attlee was a child every parent, except those too poor to pay (and that means "on the parish" poor), paid school fees whatever type of school they attended. Fees for School Board elementary schools were not abolished until 1918.

Ramsey MacDonald, before he became first Labour Prime Minister had sent his son Malcolm to Bedales.

Before you accuse someone of hypocrisy, you should learn the context.

As was reported when Corbyn was elected Labour leader, his then wife's insistence on a grammar school education for her son, broke up Corbyn's marriage.

I must have missed the 2016 election.

I must have missed the 2016 election.

He evidently means the election for the Scottish Parliament, which was held this year - smart a**e.

Hence "what they actually wanted to do in government" i.e. the government they actually control - the Scottish one.

Well, like I said, you're clearly not all that au fait with Scottish politics.

If anyone on the left in England thinks for a second that they can make common cause with the Scottish nationalists, they're either desperate or deluded - not to mention chucking their left-wing allies in Scotland under the bus.

Not only are the Scottish nationalists not particularly ideologically wedded to anything, the only thing they do consistently believe in - breaking up the UK - breaks the solidarity that this country represents and would severely disadvantage working people in Scotland, with implications further afield. It plays on the rhetoric of pulling up the drawbridge and ending the pooling and sharing of resources that benefit everyone across this country - let's not forget when Scotland was running a surplus in the 1980s, they were demanding none of our oil money went to England, Wales or Northern Ireland.